Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 146,000 in November, and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. ...

Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the Northeast coast on October 29th, causing severe damage in some states. Nevertheless, our survey response rates in the affected states were within normal ranges. Our analysis suggests that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national employment and unemployment estimates for November. ...

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +148,000 to +132,000, and the change for October was revised from +171,000 to +138,000.

There was uncertainty about this report because of Hurricane Sandy.

The headline number was above expectations of 80,000, but both September and October payroll growth was revised down.

The second graph shows the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate declined to 7.7%.

The unemployment rate is from the household report.

The unemployment rate declined because of lower participation (a decline in the civilian labor force).

The third graph shows the employment population ratio and the participation rate.

The Labor Force Participation Rate decreased to 63.6% in November (blue line. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.

The participation rate is well below the 66% to 67% rate that was normal over the last 20 years, although most of the recent decline is due to demographics.

The Employment-Population ratio decreased to 58.7% in November (black line). I'll post the 25 to 54 age group employment-population ratio graph later.

The fourth graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms, compared to previous post WWII recessions. The dotted line is ex-Census hiring.

This shows the depth of the recent employment recession - worse than any other post-war recession - and the relatively slow recovery due to the lingering effects of the housing bust and financial crisis.

With all the uncertainty about the impact of Hurricane Sandy, this was a decent report, especially with the decline in the unemployment rate. However, negatives include the downward revisions to prior months, and the decline in the participation rate.

The U.S. government simply lowers the unemployment rate by not counting all of the unemployed. We owe this innovation to the Clinton administration. In 1994 the Clinton administration redefined “discouraged workers” and limited this group to those who are discouraged for less than one year. Those discouraged for more than one year are no longer considered to be in the labor force and ceased to be counted as unemployed.

If the U.S. government will mislead the public about unemployment, it will also
mislead about Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Russia, China, and 9/11. The government fits its story to its agenda.

Quote:

If the “free and democratic” Americans cannot even find out what the unemployment rate is, how do they expect to find out about anything?

A hell of a lot worse than he should have inherited this time. And far worse than his economic team told us to expect.

Subtract the cook the books math and this is a number the left should hope did not come up~

__________________“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion"
Steven Weinberg~